If You Follow Me (24 page)

“But it's raining,” Sakura says.

“Daijoubu
,” Ritsuko says. I'll be fine.

“I can give her a ride,” Joe offers, already standing up.

“No,” Ritsuko says. “I don't want to be a bother.”

“It's no bother,” Joe says, rushing to open the door for her. She hesitates, then steps through, out into the night. As it closes behind them, I ask who wants to practice their English speeches. No one raises a hand. “Don't be shy,” I say, as they all avoid my eyes and shift in their seats. “Yuji?” I say. “
Eh…”
The doctor stalls. “I am so busy with so many patients…”

“So many patients,” the dentist echoes.

“Keiko?” I try. “Why don't you make a speech?”

“English is not useful in my life,” she says, looking right at me.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“My wife is upset because she can't come to New York,” Yuji says. “It's not a vacation,
ne
?”

“So I guess you won't take golf clubs?” she asks.

“Chotto…”
he begins, “I mean, you're being a little…”

“A little what?” she digs. “A little disappointed? A little fed up?” Listening to her vent, I believe I understand why these people come to SMILE. They don't need much urging to be direct.

I remind the group that they don't have to write an original speech. They can recite a poem or the lyrics of a song. I tell them to stop by my house any evening this week if they want to practice with me in private. “It won't be a contest if no one competes,” I say. It will be a disaster.

 

Sakura gives me a ride home, so I get back a little early. Carolyn obviously didn't expect me. She is lying on the futons in our bedroom; she is naked and she is touching herself. I freeze with my hand on the doorknob as she freezes with her hand between her legs. She fumbles for the covers while I go to the window, open it wide and stick my head out, feeling like a dog in a car, wishing I were on my way somewhere else, anywhere but here. For the first time, I can smell spring in the air. For the first time in ages, I can smell the sex in our bedroom. Lately, whenever I reach for Carolyn, she says that she's frozen, that she can't feel anything, there must be something wrong with her. I always end up reassuring her that there's nothing wrong with her, that lulls are normal in any relationship, that she'll thaw. And I guess there is nothing wrong with her after all.

“I should have knocked,” I say. “Sorry.”

“You're mad,” she says, joining me at the window, cocooned in blankets. “Don't be upset. It's not about you.”

“Obviously,” I say.

We both face the street, neither of us speaking for a while.

There were three futons in the closet when we first moved in. At first we slept with them in a stack, our limbs intertwined, anchoring each other on that narrow raft. Then we started placing two of them side by side with the third in the middle, a cushioned hump that allowed us to be close but sprawl a little. Lately, however, Carolyn has started moving the third futon back and forth, transferring it between the other two, which are separated by a widening gap on the
tatami
. She's so fair it's almost stingy. One night she gets the extra padding. The next, I come upstairs and find that I'm the lucky one.

“If you're not attracted to me anymore, I wish you'd just admit it,” I say.

“Are you still attracted to me?” she says. “Because it really doesn't seem like it.”

“Don't turn this around,” I say. “At least I'm still trying.”

“But that's what it feels like,” she says, her voice cracking. “Like I'm homework, something to check off in a to-do list. It's not sexy.”

“So this is my fault too?” I say.

“Just answer my question, and be honest for once. Don't say what you think I want to hear. Are you still attracted to me?”

“No,” I say. The word is out before I can think about it, the verbal equivalent of a door slamming. “Not lately,” I add, slipping my foot in the door. “But that doesn't mean—”

“Just stop,” she cuts me off. “You want this to be over too, but you don't want to be the one to call it quits. You want it to be my fault. That's why you keep pushing me to say that we're breaking up.” She takes my hand. “It's no one's fault. Relationships change. Most of them end. Maybe we should just feel good that we made it this long.”
Her words are harsh but her tone is gentle, and part of me knows that she's right. That part of me wants to soften. It would be a relief to stop fighting, to give up. To give in. But her fingers are sticky and I pull away. When I climbed the stairs to our bedroom, my heart didn't pound in anticipation. When I saw her masturbating, I didn't feel turned on. I can't remember the last time I felt that tug in my belly, the insistent tug of desire. No—I'm lying. It was the night I kissed Miyoshi-sensei.

“My supervisor has a spare room,” she says. “She offered to let me live there for the rest of the year. I think I'd like that, being part of the community where I'm teaching. She wouldn't charge me anything, so I could keep paying my half of the rent here.”

“Great,” I say. “It sounds like everything's all worked out. Nice timing.”

I'm turning twenty-three this week. If Carolyn remembers that my birthday is coming up, she hasn't mentioned it.

“I've been waiting for months,” she says. “She offered to let me move in after I told her that Haruki killed our cat. You have no idea how hard it's been for me to have to see him every day. I know you weren't as upset as I was, but—”

“Stop telling me how I feel!” I explode. “You think you know everything, but you don't. I killed the cat.”

“What are you talking about?” she says, smiling uncertainly. “No you didn't.”

“The day before she died, I brought home flowers and she ate them and got sick.”

“That was the night she didn't come home,” Carolyn says. “You said not to worry. You told me she'd be home when she got hungry.”

“Because,” I say, “something was wrong, and it was my fault, and I didn't want you to know.”

Nakajima's cell phone starts to ring from my pocket.
I heard he
sang a sweet song…
I push what looks like the Off button, but this just makes it ring louder so I take it downstairs and into the storage area, glad to leave the bedroom, this discussion, Carolyn and her narrow, accusatory eyes. I shove the phone into a box, slam the door behind me and curl up on the cockroach couch.

samishii:
(
ADJ
.)
lonely; solitary; desolate

D
uring first period, I stand at the faculty room windows and watch the freshman secretarial girls swim laps in the newly filled pool. They look like synchronized swimmers in their matching pink bathing suits and caps, kicking and lifting their arms in unison. Only Haruki Ogawa is not among his classmates. When he claimed that his swimming trunks had “vanished” from his locker, Miyoshi-sensei asked me to supervise him in the faculty room during my free period. Now he is sitting at Miyoshi-sensei's desk, doing the same nothing he always does: just taking up space.

“Why did you kill our cat?” I ask, standing over him with a cup of hot tea. I don't know if he understands or not. His face remains as inexpressive as a pudding, his hands lumps of dough. I imagine these hands scooping up our cat, thrusting her into the fridge and slamming the door. I imagine him pressing his bulk against the door, listening to her cries get fainter and then stop. Up close, his body emits a sour, moldy smell, like laundry that has been left in wet piles. I've seen the technical boys following him around, flapping their hands in the air and saying,
kusou
, “you reek.” He really does.

Recently, another Japanese
hikikomori
or “shut-in” made the pa
pers after a young girl he kidnapped escaped from his room. She was seven when she was kidnapped, seventeen when she escaped. For ten years he kept her hostage in the house he shared with his mother, who claims never to have known that this child was under her roof, sharing the meals she left outside her son's bedroom door. The girl wasn't interviewed, to protect her confidentiality, but I wish I knew her side of the story, why it took her so long to run, and what it's like to come back to life now, if it's possible. Haruki spent four years shut in his room. He might be able to answer this question. But he's not speaking. At least not to me.

 

Once again, the technical boys are wearing only their underpants when I enter their portable classroom. But today Miyoshi-sensei is not standing with his back to the room. He is sitting in the desk next to Nakajima, his head on his arms, apparently napping. I apologize for being late, explaining that there was a line for the photocopier.

“It's okay,” he says, sitting up, but not getting up.

“I made a worksheet,” I say. “Should we hand it out?”

“If you'd like,” he says with a shrug.

When the stack of worksheets reaches his desk, he takes one as if he were a student. He's acting like them too, aloof and disinterested, though for once they are looking at him, waiting to see what he'll do—or fail to do—next.

“You are almost finished with high school,” I say, standing alone at the front of the room, holding up a worksheet that Carolyn decorated with drawings of people at work: a woman in a white jacket with a stethoscope; a boy in a McDonald's uniform holding a box of fries; a guy waving a conductor's baton. I explain to the students that they should each circle a hobby, then follow a line to its logical career. “I like making bread,” I say, following a line with my finger, “so
in the future I will become a…baker.” The boys stare blankly. “I like playing guitar, so in the future I will become a…rock star.” I ask if there are any questions. No one raises a hand. Miyoshi-sensei pulls a rice ball from his pocket and unwraps it. The sound of crinkling cellophane fills the room, along with a vinegared whiff of pickled plum.

“Can you please translate what I just said?” I ask him.

“Sorry but I was not listening.” While I repeat myself, he finishes his snack, removes the plum pit from his mouth and examines its glistening strands, then wipes his hands on his pants, making the boys laugh.

“What's the matter with you?” I say.

“Nothing?”

“Then why won't you translate?”

“Because it is not realistic,” he says with a sigh.

“You mean it's too hard for them? I can simplify the sentences.”

“Sentences are not problem,” he says. “Problem is, these boys could not become architect or symphony conductor. These are dream jobs for best students from top universities. Not for technical students of Shika High School.” He uncaps a bottle of Coke and sucks the tan foam that spurts from its mouth. “Maybe one or two who are very lucky will get jobs at Shika's nuclear power station. Most will work at gasoline stand or convenience store. I'm sorry but it's fact.”

I scan the room, wondering if the boys understood his grim prediction, if they're resigned to these dead-end futures or pissed off. I notice that one kid has vertical stripes shaved into eyebrows and rubber plugs stretching out both earlobes. Another has somehow managed to bleach just the roots of his spiky hair, so he looks like a porcupine. Then there's Nakajima, whose Afro-perm, growing out, resembles an exploding mushroom cloud. “Just ask what they like to do for fun,” I say, inspired by an idea of what might reach
them. “If they say they like to style their hair, that's great. They can be hairdressers!” Miyoshi-sensei finally translates the question into Japanese. In response, Nakajima mutters something that makes the boys around him hoot.

“What did he say?” I ask.

“Blow job.”

“What?”

“It's Nakajima-san's hobby.” He shrugs again. “It's fun for him.”

 

Back in the faculty room, Miyoshi-sensei flips through the worksheets while I stand beside him. “They all wrote blow job!” he exclaims. “Every one!” In fact, they all filled in the worksheet the exact same way: I like
BLOW JOB
, so I will become a
GIGOLO
when I grow up. Gigolo was my contribution. I couldn't think of another career to go with that particular hobby. The boys found the notion of a male prostitute hilarious. “Great job!” they kept saying. “I want!”

“Well,” I say, “since that was the only thing you wrote on the board…”

“No,” he says, “I mean, I can't believe they all wrote! I didn't know some of these boys could make alphabet shapes. But look! It's good English,
ne
?” He glances around before opening the bottom drawer of his desk, which is slung with files. “I think I have something that could be quite useful for you,” he says, riffling through the drawer. From the back he pulls out a cardboard tube, uncaps it, and slides out a roll of posters, smoothing them on his desk. At first I think he's showing me his stash of porn as I take in a poster showing a naked white man leaning into a naked black man's arms. Both look like they were cast from the same Chippendale mold, their hairless torsos glistening.
I thought you loved me enough to tell me everything
reads the caption. The next poster shows a woman lying with her
head on another woman's lap.
With you, I thought I was safe
. In the final poster, an Asian woman straddles a John Lennon look-alike, offering him a condom.
Avoid risky behavior!

“Do you recognize?” Miyoshi-sensei says.

“It's what you told me after the
enkai
.”

“No,” he says, blushing. “I mean posters. I got them on my first trip to California. I was exchange student in Eureka. I rescued them from high school trash bin. I couldn't understand my eyes.” As teachers start to fill the faculty room, he slides the posters back into their tube and hands it to me. “How about using these to teach sex-ed?” he asks in a quiet voice.

“Are you serious?”

“It was your idea,” he says. “You told SMILE club that Japanese students should learn sex-ed in school.”

“Who told you that?”

“Yuji Ishii,” he says. “He has only medical practice of Shika, so he sees patients with all kinds of condition, including STD or unwelcome pregnancy. He thinks sex-ed would benefit Shika's students too. Especially technical boys. But how can we hook students' attention without hooking parents' attention?”

“I don't know,” I say, because he seems to be waiting for an answer.

“By teaching in English,” he replies with a grin. “Maybe we found the one subject to interest these boys!”

“But they won't understand a word,” I protest.

“Neither will parents,” he says. “It's good idea,
ne
?”

“I don't know,” I stall. “What if we got caught?”

“Be sure to include a grammar point in your worksheet,” he says. “So it looks like English lesson and not sex-ed.”

“What kind of grammar point?”

“How about prepositions,” he says. “In, out, next to…But make it sexy.” He laughs when I say that the whole point of sex-ed
is usually to make sex seem unpleasant, so that kids won't want to have it without protection. “Technical students are eighteen,” he says. “They know well, sex is not unpleasant.” He bites his lip and again I find myself staring at his mouth, remembering the feel of it. He riffles through his drawer, handing me one last “curiosity object,” an English pamphlet describing every conceivable sexual act, beginning with
frottage
and ending with
anal penetration
. I imagine standing at the front of the room, asking the boys to repeat the word “Rimming!” after me.

Then he hands me a piece of paper covered in his cursive.